A network may utilize multiple technologies and network components to support an amalgamation of services (e.g., voice, video, data, etc.). Before deploying such services, lab evaluations of a test environment may be conducted to ensure that the network, with all its corresponding components, is in compliance with the intended design requirements. In other instances, a test environment may be utilized to emulate different scenarios that may be occurring in the field. For example, a network may be experiencing power failures, switchover failures, and/or other performance issues. In such instances, a test team may emulate and evaluate numerous scenarios related to the existing problem so as to discover the source of the problem and offer solutions to correct it.
A typical test environment may include a test system and a network to be tested (sometimes referred to as a “test bed”). The network may include one or multiple network components, and the test system may include one or multiple test components. The test systems utilized for emulating and analyzing various scenarios can be very complex since they must interface with various network components, platforms, protocols, etc.
Existing test systems typically focus on a specific test area. For example, packet generators and analyzers may focus on generating packets at one point in the network, and then intercepting the traffic at another point in the network. However, extending the scope of testing beyond a particular criterion typically requires some type of intervention. For example, to evaluate packet loss due to a physical link failure event within the customer premises, a tester will need to initialize the packet generator and then manually introduce the link failure and collect the corresponding results. When emulating even more complex scenarios that involve multiple failures, the tester's intervention may be more prevalent, which can greatly slow down the testing process and/or cause inaccurate results. Additionally, depending on the test case, other issues may arise. For example, when a tester is verifying the effects of a power recovery sequence that involves different network components, the tester may have to emulate numerous scenarios to adequately explore this test case. For example, a power recovery sequence may require multiple runs because of the different timing parameters that need to be tested. When considering the large number of network components that can exist in such a test case, in addition to the variations of software, hardware, and/or firmware (e.g., different models, versions, etc.) that may be included with the network components, the number of emulations needed for adequately covering this test case increases exponentially.